[dns-operations] PowerDns Recursive Daemon

[sthaug at nethelp.no]

> > I'm thinking about using it on multi-CPU Solaris/Sparc machines handling a
> > few thousand queries per second each as a possible replacement for bind9.
> > The other option would probably be Nominum[1] caching server.
> 
> switching hats for a moment, is there anything isc could do to make bind9
> more useful or attractive to you?  granted that we make no money from the
> software itself (only development and support contracts), i'm nevertheless
> concerned about any reasons you'd have for switching away from it.

We run Nominum CNS on two recursive name servers. We also have a third
server which runs BIND 9 (diversity is a good thing).

We used to run BIND 9 only. The reasons why we chose to pay for Nominum
CNS were mainly:

- Dramatically better performance (BIND 9 could *not* handle the load
well enough).
- No slowdown once per hour due to cache cleaning.
- We used to have a problem with the named process apparently stopping
DNS processing sometimes, requiring a restart of the process. Looked
like it was related to memory issues, and we mostly got rid of it by
removing IPv6 support and running with the ISC internal malloc. But we
actually *wanted* the IPv6 support :-)
- Well defined API which made possible things like deleting *one* name
from the cache (without restarting the named process).
- Better statistics.

Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug at nethelp.no